By Olasupo Taofik
Nnamdi Azikiwe Hall has been consistently saddled with insufficient water supply to cater for the needs of its student residents. This has been a reoccurring issue according to the history of the Baluba Kingdom, across different Hall management and students executives.
This existing issue is allegedly due to the dry nature of the soil in Zik Hall which indicates a lack of sufficient supply of water from underground. Presently, there are limited numbers of tanks to cater for the water needs of Zikites. No way three functional tanks in front of A block, a single working tank behind A block,an unstable tank beside B block and two tanks in D block can serve over 900 students. Meanwhile, the numbers of tanks that are not functioning is higher than the numbers of functional tanks.
Additionally, the inefficient water pumping has contributed to the poor pump output. As a result, Students have been seen going as far as the Jaja clinic of the university to source water for bathing and cooking. The efforts of the Hall management cannot be undermined as they worked on fixing taps and boreholes this semester, however students have urged for a quick action to solve the water scarcity problem in the Hall.
Zikpress' Taofik Olasupo, went around the hall, to gauge the views of students about the water predicament in the hall.
Tariq Agboola (Faculty of Law):
“I don't think I have to tell Zikites how to feel about the water scarcity because it's obvious, Me myself I know, I had to go to tedder last week because of this water issues to wash. There are some rumours that it is Zik Hall that does not have water underground so I'm not really sure if they can be any solution to it but it's really very stressful for us, we just have to keep striving hard.8am and 10am classes are stressful to attend. Like I said I would have to go to tedder to bath because i already predict that there won't be water in the morning. Generally, it affects my schedules.
Bukunmi (100 Level Civil Engineering):
“If Indy can have water, Zik Hall is supposed to have water too. Normally we use to have water but I don’t know what happened all of a sudden then this water scarcity. Something should be done about it because waking up and not seeing to bath can discourage me from going to class. There are lot of time I have woken up and found out that there’s no water, I have to just go to class without bathing. Basically,now if there's water, in less than a minutes I'll fetch water and then do other things like reading.”
Lawrence (Computer science, 300-level):
“it is deteriorating, we’ve been facing this issue over the years whereby we have to go outside to fetch water. All I have to say that it's discouraging for students to prepare for exams and tests. Someone will be so down, weak and would want to refresh himself and relying on water and coming back to the hostel to see that there's no water, it's totally deteriorating, it's really nothing to write home about.”
Tolulope Ifedayo (Political science, 200-level):
”I feel it's very terrible,like it's a very bad situation. It's not something a student should experience especially factoring in the frequency of occurrences. I still had to fetch water at quarters this evening. Water is very crucial to our everyday activities, cooking, washing, basically it is necessary for survival. We don't have water in Zik, it's an impediment on the things we can do.It affects our productivity level. There are days that I had tests,I had to walk to Jaja because the water in quarters was exhausted………it really has compounding negative effects. The current administration I would say that there's been a slack of communication. While I understand the dynamics of Water problems in Zik Hall, the effect of effective communication would have made a very huge difference on how people react to these things. While the topography of Zik might be different from other hostels and the pumping machine easily gets spoiled and all of that. The way they've been handling it has been like that because the land is bad they can't do anything about it.Nobody is taking that accountability decision. For freshers , this is a very bad first year experience.”
Segun Adeosun (Political science, 200-level):
“the water issue is affecting everybody,even when I was in 100 level. It has been a predominant issue in Zik. We use to go as far as Jaja, sometimes post graduate Hall to fetch water and if it persist sometimes we cannot bath to exams hall. Our body react to the bad water. After bathing we develop rashes on our body because the water is not conducive to the body. We know they are trying to make amendment but we’ve not really seen any changes. I remember rushing to an exam Hall and then I had to stress to get water and the stress scattered what I've read in my brain. Water is a source of life and it should be something that's rampant.Zik Hall has many tanks but the tank that are working are very few. It's better to have something small that's much useful than something much that's not useful.”
